You can also try running chkdsk from the command line to see if there are any sectors going bad.

Tanveer Ahmed

February 28, 2013 at 9:36 am

the sound is normal but you can ckeck your harddrive health status bu downloading some tools like crystal disk info and Harddisktune pro

Gaurav Anwardekar

February 28, 2013 at 5:23 am

it can be the sound but if a wire is touching any fan it can make tht sound too

Jan Fritsch

February 27, 2013 at 11:53 pm

It's hard to say from this recording itself but it does sound rather normal to me.

Is the hard drive by any chance connected vertically with the connectors to the top or bottom? The sounds hard drives emit can vary depending on their orientation.

I thought my mothers computer hard drive was failing (sounding rather similar) but all tests I did were in the "green". I exchanged it with a 3 month old hard drive that was used only twice before. While I recalled the hard drive not giving any distinct sound before it had exactly the same sound as the old one the minute ~ similar to your recording ~ the day I put it into her computer.

If you even need to ask the question, you've got a problem. Hard disk is probably the component most at risk of failure in your PC, things have got worse - manufacturers warranties used to be 5 years, with cheaper disks it can nao be as little as one year.
You are best advised to have good backups so when that fateful day arrives that your PC dies all you need is a new disk and restore your backups.
A noisy disk can just be a sign it's getting full. Loud clicks are serious. If you are concerned why not buy a copy of http://www.xxclone.com/, install a new disk, copy everthing across then use xxclone to keep the duplicate up to date. If the primary dis does fail all yuou need do is swap.

Oron Joffe

February 27, 2013 at 11:15 pm

No, this sounds perfectly normal to me. However, it's possible that your disc is heavily fragmented and writing is therefore noisier than usual (the armature needs to move a lot more, which causes the "ticks & clicks"). Defrag your HD and see what difference that makes.

Benjamin Benkert

March 4, 2013 at 3:54 pm

I agree with Oron Joffe.

Adam Campbell

February 27, 2013 at 10:14 pm

The sound of hard drive failing can take a lot of forms. I would be lying if I said that I was sure that that sound is the hard drive failing, but you can never be too cautious. Back up as soon as you can, and continue to do so regularly until if and when your hard drive does crash.